Monday, August 22, 2011

I can still hear him screaming. I don't know what to do; after all, he IS still my son...right? I should probably start explaining. It all started about a week ago on a day like any other. I woke up to my son crying. I changed his diaper, made breakfast, the usual. It was a Friday, which is usually when I go shopping to refill the fridge, but I had decided to put it off until Saturday.

I was putting my son to sleep at around 9 PM. I was making him his bottle when I looked out the window. The sun had been down for about two hours. My flood lights shone as far as the tree line. It's not like there was much else to see, just about five miles of woods until you hit the main road, then another twenty miles to the nearest town.

I kept getting glimpses of a shadowy figure moving by the windows on my porch. I thought nothing of it; it was probably just my cat, Sam. I laid my son down in his crib, gave him his bottle, turned out the lights, and left. It was about 11 when I first heard it over the baby monitor: a loud scurrying sound.

At first, I thought it might have been Sam again (he sometimes gets in he room when I forget to close the door), but that didn't make sense; Sam was outside, and I was sure I closed the door. I went in the room to take a look. The only thing that seemed out of place was the open window. I was almost positive it was closed when I left, but the room was so hot I thought I must have left it open and went back out to the living room.

At 12, the baby woke up crying. I sat there for a minute or two wondering if he would ever sleep through the night. I finally lifted myself from my chair to get my son, when he stopped crying. I listened to the monitor closely and heard low-pitched singing and creaking of the floorboards. Someone was in my house and they had my son. I rushed to the kitchen and grabbed the longest knife I could find.

I felt a chill shoot up my spine as I walked down the hallway towards the door. I slowly opened the door and saw "it." It was tall and mostly hairless, with a few hairs atop its round head. Its teeth were jagged, its nose was pushed in to the point that it almost looked like it didn't have a nose at all, and it smelled like a rotting corpse.

Its eyes... Oh god... it's fucking eyes. They were black and almost looked like it had just empty sockets where they should have been.

It was feeding my son some sort of liquid from what looked to be a glass bottle. It noticed me and left through the bedroom window. I ran to the front door to see my son on the lawn, shivering in the cold moonlight. I opened the door to leave, but as soon as I tried it rushed up the stairs and pounced on me. I got up and noticed it was just trying to get by me.

It grabbed my only phone. Not only was it faster and stronger than me, it was actually aware of what it was doing. It then ran out through the back door and I quickly locked my doors and windows. I went back to my front door to see my son crying on the lawn. He was cold and in pain and that thing was watching him. I tried to go outside, but that thing wouldn't let me.

As I sat there and watched my son began to change; his hair started to fall out, his skin turning pale. That thing has now started banging on my front door. I have retreated to my bedroom. I think they're in the house. I can hear the little one (my son) playing with his toys, and the large one testing the doorknob.

I've never walked through the woods at night before. The slightest idea of it makes me incredibly uncomfortable. As for my friend, Charlie, he was quite the opposite. He loved walking at night, may it be through the woods or elsewhere. On one particular night, he asked me to come through these supposedly haunted woods with him. I absolutely refused to go until he offered weed, which I myself had been dry for a solid month now. In March of Michigan, weed usually comes in higher prices...or at least in the part of Michigan I'm from.

Around 8PM, he pulled into my driveway and honked me out of the house. This was very unlike him; he usually likes to come in for a few minutes when picking me up. He must have been very eager to leave. I've gone on walks with him before and he's usually quite series. Head always looking straight forward, never speeds up or slows down...we have our most "intellectual" conversations we'd ever have, compared to just sitting around. These walks to him were treated as if there were rules, or like walking was an art.

Anywho, I come out to his car with a maglight ready and a set of spare batteries. I even grabbed my largest fold knife I had, just for safe measure.

"So Charlie, about these woods..." I said.

"Yeah?" He replied.

"Where the fuck are they? We've been driving for a good hour now and I'm getting restless. I thought we were got for a 'walk,' not a ride."

"Fuck you. We'll get there when we get there."

"Whatever. So... what makes this place 'haunted?'"

"I got high and started looking at the scariest places in this state, and this one was the closest around. It's called 'Seven Gables.' Apparently some witch used to live in these woods 1-200 years ago, right? I can't remember why, but I guess she cursed the place. There's a good x-mile path through these woods and if we 'hear a scream,' the last person to leave the property is supposed to die somehow.

Also, some people moved into that witch's house some time later: a husband, a wife, and two daughters. One night, the husband went nuts, took a shootgun and shot his wife, then locked his two daughters in their room and burned the place down. He was gonna do himself with the gun when he 'suddenly' found some rope hanging in tree, already made into a noose, so he hung himself. Legend has it, the curse is what made him go crazy that night.

Anyway, I asked around about this place and everyone has some sort of scary story. Cell phones go out, people see little girls dancing with trees, people hear screaming... it just sounds like a good time."

"...Okay, so how do you know that not just people fucking with travelers? I mean, if it's in the top listed spooky places, I'm sure it gets a lot of traffic from stupid people like us. The neighbors must hate it, so I'm sure they fuck with tourists." I replied.

"Hey, I'm not saying one thing or another, but we're going." Charlie replied.

"Fine."

"Oh, and apparently no one can find the house. That's the last thing I read. There's so much woods and a lot of the paths aren't marked. There's a main path that leads you into the middle of the woods and we should come across a corn field surrounded by woods. There should be about two more hours of path passed that, then it's all more or less uncharted territory. The house is in that area."

"...and we're going to find this house? Especially this late at night?" I asked.

"Fuck. I hope so, but I was just in the mood for a more adventurous walk tonight. Since you're on /x/ all the time, I figured you'd want to go. finally have a story of your own to tell." He replied.

"I guess... so how much further away are we?"

We eventually come up to this dirt road named Seven Gables. It's only about four minutes long and it dead-ends at a gate that led the path into the woods. The road was more of a very, very large driveway to some haunted house no one knows exists or not.

At this point, I remembered that there was a cheerleader and her sister who went to my high school. They were in an accident with a drunk driver on the night of prom, but it was rumored that her and her sister were both here that same night with a group of friends. They were the last ones over the property line as they were apparently getting chased by something. They sped off to leave and as they got closer to home, the accident happened. I even remember receiving an invitation to the funeral I never went to. Regardless, it had to have been a coincidence.

Charlie noted that he read that the gate we just approached was considered the property line of the area. The most appropriate phrase I could think of to piss him off at the time (because that's what friends do) was "So, the last person back over the gate is a rotton egg?" He gave me a full-faced glare and hopped the gate.

"C'mon, ya pansy."

I started walking in slow motion toward the gate to push him more. He glared at me again, pulled out a joint, lit it, and walked off. I was not about to get my turn skipped, so I chased his ass down. We walked through the woods for what felt like at least an hour, so I reached for my phone to check the time. It was 12:40 AM and we had arrived at 11:22 PM.

While I had my cell phone out, I noticed big bold letters labeled, "No service," where my bars should've been. Apparently, Verison is not everywhere I go. After showing Charlie my service was out, he pulled out his phone as well and, sure enough, no service. We poked at each other, making very fake spooky sounds, and continued our walk. The path we were on began to grow narrow and curvy as it became more and more covered with thick foliage.

I know I was high, and I know that I grow paranoid when I'm high, but I began to hear noises. It wasn't like a shuffling in a brush or branches moving. It was definitely no bird or owl, nor crickets or frogs. It sounded more like "boom" sounds in the distance. It wasn't an explosion, but what I can only describe as a heavy "bass" sound or like something giant dropping and hitting solid dirt. I turned and asked Charlie about it and the only thing he said was, "It's been getting louder the further we've been going down this path. I've been hearing it for a while, but I wasn't gonna say anything."

After a few moments of careful listening, he was right; it was getting louder. We could even start to feel it beneath our feet. It had finally got so loud that it seemed as if we were standing next to a shitty car that someone had dropped way too much cash for shitty sub-woofers blaring their shitty rap. And then...it stopped.

When it did stop, we were coming to a large bend in the path. When we turned through the bend, we found the cornfield. It was hard to imagine a cornfield in the middle of the woods, from listening to Charlie's story, or at least I had never heard of something like that. It wasn't that large of an area, but low and behold...there it was.

It was much untamed and there wasn't really anything growing in it. It hardly even had any grass. It was also very hill-y; enough to where if one of us went around a small hill, the other couldn't be seen around it. We split up and explored this field for a little bit, searching for anything to show eachother. There was nothing but old left over garbage that other tourists had left on their visits.

After ten minutes of aimless wandering, Charlie yelled out my name. I could hear him running in my direction. I ran toward him, too, until I saw his flashlight, then let him just run to me.

"Sup, Meng?" I asked.

"Someone started to run toward me from the woods." He replied.

I was more than sure that he was fucking with me until I saw a dark figure approaching from behind him. It was too far away to see with my flashlight, so I reached into my pocket and started to run my fingers on the groove in my knife blade. I was not about to die in the middle of nowhere.

As the figure got closer, I was able to start making out features. It was definitely another person. He got close enough to where I could even begin to see colors in what he was wearing. I called out to this person and got a reply: "THANK JESUS!" It was a middle-aged man wearing a brown vest, hiker's boots, and a backpack. He was covered in blood.

"You two need to get the fuck out of here, now!" The stranger yelled.

"Wait, who the hell are you? There wasn't another car parked by the gate. We were the only ones here." I asked.

"My name is Tim. I don't live too far away from here, so I biked. But you two need to leave now!" Tim replied.

"Fucking hold on a second and don't get the fuck any closer. What the hell are you covered in and why?" Charlie asked.

"WE DON'T HAVE MUCH TIME! I DON'T KNOW HOW FAR BEHIND ME THEY ARE, BUT I'VE BEEN RUNNING AND LOST FOR FOUR FUCKING HOURS!" Tim screamed.

We didn't really know what else to do at this point, so we took the man's advice. With him in front of us and me still feeling the groove in my knife, we ran down the path. The man did not hesitate to make it over this gate before we did. Fucking urban legends. We walked toward Charlie's car and Tim began his story.

"I come out here every Friday night with my three hounds. I'm an amature ghost hunter; I came here tonight with all of my gear and my boys. They run right behind me if I ride a little slow. I know that spirit energies are more active at night and I've heard every story there is to this place. For the five months that I've been coming here, I've only found orbs in my footage. No audio, no faces, nothing. I bring my boys because they can pick up on stuff more than I can and before my cameras and meters do.

Today, they took off barking into the woods and I chased after them. Theys plit up on me so I just followed Jonathan because I knew he was the closest. He howls differently than the others. I followed him until he got too far and I figured, 'they're smart dogs. They'll find me in no time if I wait by where they took off.'

I got lost trying to find my way back to the path, and I found a house. I took out my camera, since I was sure that this is the house all the stories were talking about. I went inside and started taking pictures."

Tim started to shake and sob as he reached for his camera. I looked over at Charlie and he was gripping his flashlight, ready to strike this man. I knew he was reching for his camera, but I don't think he did. I pulled out my cigarettes and passed them around.

"Thanks. You have to see these photos." Tim said.

He started flipping through the photos. It hardly looked like a house at all, with all the burn damage. I could see that Tim was hardly smoking his cigarette, since he was focusing too hard to not just explode into tears.

After viewing a bunch of burnt wreckage, the photos started to give more of an ill feeling each time he hit next. Finally, he hesitated to hit the next button again; he wiped his tears on his face, leaving more blood smeared than tears. He hit next again and it was a photo of two of his dogs, disemboweled and dragged across the floor. Someone or something had used their blood to draw some giant symbol on the floor. It wasn't a pentagram, but it gave the same dark feeling a pentagram would give in a photo like this.

Tim gave up holding back and started crying. He hit next again. It was more or less the same photo, but with one of his dogs looking up at him. It was barely, but still alive.

"I picked him up and held him and cried with him. That's why I'm covered in bloo-"

Tim had thrown up all over his and our shoes.

"Aww fuck, DUDE!" Charlie yelled.

"I dropped Isaac when I heard some woman start humming in the room next to me. I could hear that bitch walking to me, so I just ran. I fucking ran and ran and ran. I couldn't figure out how to get the hell out of these woods! THESE FUCKING WOODS! A..and then I started to see and hear things all around me. These...things were following me. I never found Jonathan, but he's probably dead too. When iw as certain I lost them, I saw lights up again, and that's when I found you guys."

We took whatever bottled water we had in the car and gave them to Tim to wash himself off. Charlie offered to take Tim hom,e so I took off my coat for him to sit on and keep blood from getting all over the seats. I never cared much for that coat anyway. We started to hear a single dog howl before we took off. I turned to look down the path behind the gate. I could hear something small running in our direction.

Charlie started the car and I hopped in. I looked back behind us as we drove off, but I couldn't see anything through the darkness. We dropped Tim off and he didn't say thank you or even look back as he walked inside.

Charlie then took me home. Throughout the whole ride, he kept checking his mirror and looking over his shoulder. He was definitely uneasy about something. Before stepping out of his car, I asked him if anything was wrong. He drove off without saying a word. "Whatever, he's just high," I thought.

I threw the blood-stained coat away and called the police to let them know of this incident. It was now about 5 AM and I was tired. I never even found out what that bass sound was. At around 1 PM, I woke up and did my daily "morning" routines. I went and checked my phone and I had 132 missed calls and a single text message, all from Charlie. "Holy fuck," I thought before immediately trying to call him back.

No answer. I didn't have any voice mails or anything; all I had was a single text message. I opened it and all it said was, "I still hear that sound." Pocket dialing? What the fuck is with this text? I never got hold of him and I couldn't figure any of it out.

A couple of days later, I received a phone call from Charlie's dad. He said he hadn't seen Charlie since before he left to come pick me up on the night of our walk. It's now been nearly three months since this incident had occurred and no one has seen or heard from Charlie since that night.

Police have stopped by numerous times to question me about the incident. They say they can't find anyone named Tim who lives in that area and no one in the area has ever heard of some amateur ghost hunter. They also claim they've heard stories of this "Seven Gables" and it's all urban legend. There IS no house, no ghosts, no witch, nothing. I know I'm the department's number one suspect, but unfortunately...

The only thing I can tell the police about the whereabouts of my friend, Charlie... He was the last one over the fence.

Ever since I was young, I remember hear the sound at Grandma's old farmhouse. Mom would put me to sleep in the upstairs room and slip downstairs to sleep with my father, leaving me and my brother alone in the upstairs room.

An hour or so after we'd been put to bed, a scratching noise could be heard above our heads in the attic every night. It was slow...like a pendulum. Back and forth, it'd sweep across the ceiling, at times skittering faster before fading back to a slow scratch. At first we were scared, as children are apt to do, but we learned to live with it and it comforted us in some strange way. It was kind of like "white noise," and it helped us sleep.

Well, I'm a grown man now. Grandma passed away some years ago. As we were cleaning out her house, Mom and I found ourselves in the attic. We were clearing out some old boxes and stuff when I came to the middle of the wooden floor. Although years of dust had covered them, there were still visible scratches in the wood.

I laughingly remarked to my mother about hearing a scratching noise when I used to sleep in the room below and my Mom's face drained of color. She gently took me by the shoulders and told me the story about how HER Grandpa, the father of MY Grandmother, had lost his job in the Great Depression and could barely afford to feed his family. He came home one night and hung himself in the attic with a horse bridle.

Apparently he regretted his decision, because he struggled to gain his footing near the end by flailing his feet. His heavy boots had gouged the wood where he had hung himself.

Friday, August 5, 2011

"Bah. It's just an old shirt I've been wearing too long, but when I think about it, I can't remember when I actually bought it."

"That's weird. Maybe your mom got it for you. Right?"

...That was the only thing I had in my mind.

My mom...I have no memories of her, as strange as it is.

It fades out. There's nothing there; only a strange scent. It gives me a home feeling. It's so strange. Home? My home is here. It's always been here.

The more answers I get, the more questions I get. Where am I? Who am I? What am I really doing here?

For a minute or so, everything was normal...but those images kept flashing through my mind. A TV with static. A woman crying. Three kids running away. It keeps going over in my head. Her scream. Nothing makes sense anymore. The world keeps turning upside down.

What's going on? Every time I ask myself a question, the surroundings change. The sky turns red. The skyscrapers get taller. It kind of looks like they have corporate logos on them, too. It all begins to spin. It gets dark. Suddenly, I hear buzzing that seemingly has no source.

They want you. They need you. Binary keeps popping up in my thoughts. I can see the numbers. Eventually, the binary changes into three numbers that continously repeat themselves.

731 731 731 731 731 731

An old computer pops up in front of me. There's a message on the screen.

"Are you trying to leave?"

I stare at the screen.

"Why do you want to leave?"

I see a keyboard next to me. I grab it so I can answer, but notice it has no wires connected to it. I feel the urge for answers, so I type anyway.

I kept staring at the screen. What the hell was going on? This didn't make any sense at all!

"GET ME OUT OF HERE!" I screamed.

The screen had a new message, but the letters looked like they were written in blood...with someone's fingers. I looked closely and eventually figured out what it said: "HELL IS SOON GOING TO BREAK LOOSE."

When I was done reading, pictures appeared. Pictures of massacres, people in pain. People with blood all over their faces. All of them looked like they were screaming things like "HELP US! HELP US!"

I looked away and was taken back to the room with the old computer. The PC was dead. The screen was black. I raised my head to look around, but noticed something on the white wall above the screen.

"RUN BEFORE THEY KILL YOU ALL."

Blood was everywhere. My heart seemed to stop when I spotted two glowing eyes above the bloody message. They disappeared soon after I gave them eye contact.

I woke up and found myself sitting on the couch. My old Game Boy Color was in my hands, with Pokemon Red inserted and the device turned on. I saw my character was in Lavender Town. That haunting tune played through the speakers the whole time. It was so bizarre. It felt like I had heard that tune in the dream the entire time.

My legs had fallen asleep, so I struggled as I stood up. I went to the kitchen for a glass of water. When I entered, I noticed a black ghost. It was staring at me, but after two seconds it vanished. I thought it was just my brain playing tricks on me.

July 23, 1998 -- Kazuma Kaito killed eleven children in his school with his own hands. He had been trying to rip their eyes out. When the police found Kazuma in the janitor's closet, they could hear him mumbling, "The end is near. It won't go away. Make it go away."

Kazuma was later asked by a psychiatrist what he wanted to go away. Kazuma replied, "The black ghost." The psychiatrist then asked Kazuma what the ghost wanted from him. He then said, "It wants us to be afraid."

"From what," the psychiatrist asked.

"They want to take over the-" Kazuma started before beginning to strangle himself. As the psychiatrist tried to pull the boy's hands away from his neck, the psychiatrist could hear the boy struggling to continue speaking. "The ord-...they are-...take ove-..."

Kazuma passed away moments later. Three seconds after, the security guards stormed into the room, only to find they were too late. The psychiatrist was shocked.

The police later went through the security tape. They looked at the unusual case and nothing seemec wrong, but at closer inspection they noticed something terrifying and breathtaking:

When the hands turned against Kazuma, his facial expression looked surprised and his eyes were aimed at the wall behind the psychiatrist. His hands aggressively rushed toward his neck as if someone else was strangling him. It was like a third person was in that room. Kazuma was really trying to strangle himself. He was fighting for his life.

It all started three days ago. I was looking up some funny pictures and found a forum topic called, "Post the funny pictures". Every post was spam and nonsense like, "PL%52EH3YH2W4O^N6T6N6O18D." I like to think about hidden meanings in things, so I decided to play with the message a little. I eventually noticed that the message backwards and rearranged was "666 NO DONT WHY HELP." I was obviously laughing and thought it was spam.

As I went on, nothing more happened. A few more messages like that were posted, so I thought there were a few trolls in the thread. That night, I was in my room watching Nick @ Nite and decided to go onto the internet with my PSP. For a laugh, I went back to that thread and found that all of the posts appeared normal.

I got out my laptop and was about to go back to the website but realized that the corrupted messages meant the site had some kind of virus, so I decided against it. At that point, I went to sleep and didn't wake up until around 12:40PM.

I got onto my computer and avoided the website. I was on Youtube when I figured out my computer was doomed. One of the comments was "4N3I623S10LK3N31232I10S4N21A6T0A3s31em25T3PvE12C6CA3." I don't even want to know what that said. Google was even worse. I searched some pictures for videos I was going to make, but I always found at least two pictures of dead and dismembered corpses even when safe search was on and while I searched for the most innocent things.

What I really noticed was a picture of a little girl who was about seven years old. Her eyes were dead white and her forehead was slit open. She seemed to be holding some book, but I couldn't tell what it was. Her mouth had been ripped open, too, and a star had been scratched into her stomach. It seemed like her hair was ripped out, as well. However, there was no blood, as if whoever did that to her cleaned her off so the wounds were visible.

When the whole image sunk into my mind, I immediately took my bat and cleared my computer off my dsk with it. I may have broke the monitor, but I didn't make sure. I knew that I didn't need to stick around to see anything worse happening. I wouldn't even dare give the website's IP to anyone, either. I told my friends what happened and they only started pranking me; they continuously started sending me fake emails that looked like the messages in the thread that started this mess.

It's only now that I realized the girl in the picture was my little sister, who died two years ago.

Today, my friend messaged me on Facebook. He said something about a scary noodle. He talked about how scary it was, but he wasn't typing like he usually does. He was the sort of person that never made spelling mistakes, but his message looked like he was rushing to write it. I wouldn't be surprised if my friend had gotten mad. He got mad sometimes for no reason, like if we bothered him while he was working on one of his tests. I'm just going to ignore him for a while. He'll stop acting weird soon.

November 30, 2013

I haven't heard from my friend in weeks. It looks like he really did get mad. Maybe he worked so hard on one test and ended up failing, then committed suicide over it. That really could be a possibility. You know, I'm actually think of checking out that dumb scary noodle now.

December 2, 2013

I'm scared. The story I read mentioned that anyone who reads it will die a few days afterward. I know it's just a story, but I believe it. I guess I'll find out if it's true in a few days.

December 4, 2013

I'm starting to feel sick. It might just be a coincidence. I probably caught a cold.

December 5, 2013

I'm really not feeling well now. It can't just be a coincidence. The doctors don't even know how I got sick or what I'm sick with.

December 8, 2013

I feel like I'm going to die. It sounds dumb, but it's true. I think I'll just go get a glass of water.

James McLanahan was found dead in his kitchen on December 12, 2013. Blood was dripping out of his mouth and a small pool had already settled on the floor. Doctors couldn't find any source of his death.

This friend that was mentioned was most likely Thomas [NAME REDACTED], who was found in a similar manner in his own home a month earlier.

Police attempted to find this 'scary noodle' that was mentioned, but no trace of it could be found.

Alright, people. I’m here because I need your help. I haven’t got a lot of time (it’ll be dark soon, you see). All I need is a name. It’s too late for me, I won’t be able to do much, except pass on the name. That’s the key, the key to staying alive, is to the name. Reminds you of Doctor Who, right?

Everytime the Doctor figures out the name of the thing, what it is, it stops in its tracks, and he says something witty or figures out how to beat it, or at least he gets to run away with his sidekick. Damn, Doctor Who. Nerdy as fuck reference at a time like this. But I’m frazzled. Sun’s going down. Then it’ll come for me.

It started last summer. I just got my Bachelor’s Degree in Philosophy (sounds like a fucking waste of money, but I already had a job lined up, so, lucky me, I guess) and my half-brother, his girlfriend and I were roadtripping all over Europe. We’re all spoiled rich white kids, except my half-brother’s girl friend, Sarah. She’s spoiled rich and Greek.

Anyway, we did the whole damn thing, starting in England and France and then all around the whole continent, and it was really cool. An amazing experience, even if it ate up a lot of money. We planned to end the trip in Greece, where Dave’s (that’s my half-brother) girlfriend’s family owned some estate on an island. She and Dave kept joking about hooking me up with one of her cousins, and I was getting pretty excited for it.

Plus, I really had gotten into my major, and Greek mythology, so I was hoping to learn all sorts of cool stuff, and maybe see some ruins.I saw them, all right, and I wish I fucking hadn’t. But I’ll get there.

So we get to the island, and we meet Sarah’s family, and her cousin’s are hot alright, fucking gorgeous, but they don’t want anything to do with me. In fact, they seem more interested in Dave, which pisses off Sarah more than anything else. So she decides to use me as an excuse to get Dave away from them, and go see some caves on the other side of the island. Which hurts my chances with these fabulous Greek ladies even more, but hell, I’m a nerd; caves are cool, and I wanted to see ‘em.So off we go.

And when we get there, it’s everything you’d expect. The beaches were all white sands, beautiful, and sunny. These caves were volcanic or something, I dunno, but the rock was all black and shiny, like, perfect photo contrast. Anyway, Sarah’s leading the way, chatting us up the whole time, clinging to Dave. I can tell they’re getting all romantic, and they never really wanted me along in the first place (I had just been an excuse to get away) so I decide to do the polite thing.

I know, I know, you never go off alone in a scary movie or that shit, but I was on a tiny, beautiful, sunny island in Greece, couldn’t have been more than a square mile, and I had a flashlight.So as David and Sarah stay in the main chamber of the cave, sucking face, I flick on my flashlight and head deeper into the caves, and I can tell it’s kinda veering off to the right, and down a little, but I’m not worried, see, that’s the big difference. In horror movies and scary stories you always get worried before the bad stuff happens, but I didn’t.

No hairs standing up, no goosebumps, just calm. And I can still breath fine, and walk fine (just crouching down a little) when suddenly the floor was gone. I fell for a few seconds into pitch blackness.

I hit the ground hard. I would find out later that I fractured my tailbone, but at the time it was just a dull hurt. I had fallen on what felt like a bunch of dry sticks, and I had dropped the flashlight. Still, I wasn’t panicking yet; the flashlight had been one of those super-sturdy mag-lights, and I was sure I could find it. That kind of confidence, my friends, is rewarded.

My fingers closed around the cool metal of the light and I’ll admit, there was a brief moment where I was afraid to turn it on. I murmured a quick little prayer to Whoever was listening, and let my thumb pause awhile before pushing down the rubber button. The flashlight flicked on right away, but I almost wished it hadn’t, because I could see the floor all around me, and what had felt like old, dry sticks. Bones.

Really old ones. I mean, like, these could’ve been Socrates’ bones, that’s how old they were, crunching away underneath me. After about a minute, I got over my panic, and started looking around a little, objectively.There were a lot of bones, enough to cover the floor of the ten foot by ten foot space. The walls were thick black, the same volcanic material of the rest of the cave, except for one point, about five feet off of the ground, were something had been painted on the wall in red.

A circle. Just a harmless, unobtrusive circle, albeit one that was painted in a dulled crimson that almost had to be human blood. I suppressed a shiver and walked over toward it, my feet crunching on them bones them bones them dry bones (ha-ha), and I get right up close, shining the light on it, and still, it looks innocent enough, just out of place. So I reached my finger up and gently tapped the red circle.

Then I felt it. All of the fear and anguish and horror that I should’ve felt when I first fell into the place. I could feel something, like blood and screams and pain washed over the walls of that tiny chamber like layers of paint, and before long I realize it’s me who’s screaming, not for help but just in this guttural, caveman fear.

Dave and Sarah found me almost right away. I don’t really remember them showing up, or pulling me out of that place, but I must’ve been screaming right up until they pulled me out, because for the rest of the trip, they kept asking me what I’d seen. I couldn’t tell them about the circle, I don’t know why.

Whenever they asked I’d just say “Bones. I saw Bones.” And for the most part, they left me alone. They had each other. The trip ended two days later, and I was incredibly relieved to get on the plane. Because since I had gotten out of that cave, I hadn’t been able to sleep. I’m not the kind of guy who can go days without sleep, hell, I don’t even like to stay up that late.

But the night after I got out of the cave, I just lay in bed, awake, unable to move, just feeling anxious all over. Every time I’d close my eyes, I’d feel the need to tear them open right away.The second night after the cave, the night before we left for home, was worse. It wasn’t just anxiety anymore. It was the feeling that something was making me feel anxious.

My eyes would scan the darkness constantly, obsessed with the feeling that there was some entity creeping along the edges of my vision, hunting me, watching me. I never saw anything, no monsters; just felt it.But the second I stepped foot on that plane, I felt safe. Secure. I slept the whole ten hours home, and felt well-rested enough to forget about the whole ordeal.

Until it caught up to me. I don’t know exactly how much time passed, not more than two weeks, and by then I honestly had forgotten about the creepiness. I had just started a management position at an office owned by a friend from college, and was adjusting (pretty well) to all the money I was going to be making.

Life was looking up, and I was happy, all was well, yadda-yadda-yadda. Then it caught up to me. The first night was the same, just anxiety, worry, the inability to sleep. I was concerned, but figured I was replaying the experience or was maladjusting to work or something. I tried to shut it rationally from my mind and get over it.

The night after that, I even got a little sleep. Of course, the third night, the anxiety was back with a vengeance, and I sat in bed all night, lights on, looking and listening for something, something that was out there, hunting. That was two weeks ago.

I know you don’t believe me. Ignoring all of the monster stuff, a person can’t go that long without sleep, but I must’ve. I can account for every single minute that’s passed these last two weeks. During the day, I’m fine. I did take naps, that’s probably what saved me. But every night, the anxiety would get stronger, and stronger, and the feeling that something was there would overwhelm me.

I knew it now, knew it was some tangible, existing monster, but I just couldn’t know what it was.If I could find out what it was, what it looked like, what it wanted, I could stop it...or fight it...or run. Who am I kidding? I know what it wants. It wants me. And even with a name, I won’t be able to fight it. But maybe, if I find out what it is, before it gets me, I’ll write its name on my walls. Or draw a circle. Time now, anyway. The sun’s set, and I can really feel it.

No one would have guessed that man's darkest hour would have been 9:27 A.M. Central Standard time. No one would have guessed that a small town in Nowheresville, U.S.A. could bring down the world. No one would have guessed that the entire planet would be united against America. But then again, no one knew what the Americans had been planning for years.

I was working for a small private company at the time. We were funded by the United States government, but were technically seperate from it. Plausible deniability and all that. Of course I didn't know that. All I knew was that I had just graduated from a small college in a midwestern state school and this was the only job opportunity that promised anything other than boredom and embarrassment for the rest of my life.

I was basically a glorified receptionist. I took calls, made coffee, made appointments for meetings and just generally did what I was told. Not the most glamorous job, but it was either this or admit that I'd never surpass my father the mechanic in a one gas station town. So when one of my cousins suggested the job as a great way to get out into the world, I jumped.

People are always saying things like "If I had known what was coming I would have never taken that job," but honestly, if I hadn't taken the job I'd be dead now. And I still have enough fight in me to at least appreciate that.

Now I was always taught not to be too curious, and definitely never to look a gift horse in the mouth. So I did my job. And I did my best. And I didn't ask questions and I said yes sir and no ma'am. And I got promoted. I was to be Colonel Olsen's assistant. Not a bad deal at all. This changed my job description by about three words. I was now doing all the same things as before, but I was doing them "for the Colonel."

He and I developed a rapport. We were both Christian men who had come from small towns and big families. He became the closest thing I had to a friend at the compound. And I feel like I must have meant something to him as well. One day after a meeting he asked me into his office. I didn't think it would be any different than any other chat we'd had over the past few months. I was wrong.

He started by handing me a flash drive, a key, and a cell phone. If I ever got a text message from the cell phone I was to take the key and unlock the safe in his office. I was then to upload the data from the flash drive onto a laptop that he stored there. After that I was to read the notes he had left me in the safe and follow their instructions to the letter.

Even at the time I knew this was a cryptic message. Try as I might I couldn't push it out of my head. I was always raised to be obedient and I tried not to to be curious. But it was too much this time. I tried to access the files on the flash drive one day and locked up my computer. Nothing came of it and when I called tech support they were baffled.

They ended up transferring the contents of my hard drive to a new computer which they asked me to kindly be more careful with. I promised them I would treat it with the utmost love and they laughed and walked away. I slid the flashdrive into my back pocket with the key and went home.

When I came to work the next day it seemed normal enough. I was told that all employees would be going through a medical screening that day. And since my last name was Albreicht I would be first. As I was receiving a shot from a particularly busty and very friendly nurse, the phone started buzzing. Not my personal phone. The phone. I quickly excused myself to check the text. It was blank. However, it had come from a very familiar number. Colonel Olsen's.

I quickly made my way to his office which was blocked by two impressive looking soldiers. I tried to look unassuming as I made my way for the door but they weren't having it. Colonel Olsen's office was being searched for signs of treason against the United States.

I was blown away. Treason? There was no way that could be. The Colonel was the most honest upstanding man I had ever known in my life. I hid my concern and told the men that I had heard about this issue and had been spying on the Colonel for months now. I told them that I had a key to his office safe and that if I were allowed to enter the room I would help them with their investigation.

The two soldiers looked quizically at each other. They had clearly not been expecting this. I was not the country bumpkin they had expected. I told them that if they didn't let me in I would go to their superior officer and claim that they had been obstructing my investigation. That did the trick.

They unlocked the door and the taller of the two led me into the room. I walked quickly to the safe hoping that I could somehow think my way out of this. My hands shook as I slipped the key into the safe. It unlocked with the loudest clunk I had ever heard. I slowly swung the door open kneeling in front of it to obscure the soldier's vision. There was the laptop, and some documents. And a gun! What had I gotten myself into. It had a tube attached to the barrel that I knew had to be a silencer.

Could I do this? Should I trust the man who was being charged for treason?

I whipped around and put the gun to the head of the soldier who was looking at some documents on the desk and pulled the trigger as I closed my eyes as tight as I could. I don't think I need to describe what a gun does to a head. The other soldier opened the door to ask about the sound he had just heard and I put a bullet between his eyes. I may not have been the country bumpkin that they expected but I was definitely part of middle class America and my dad was a card carrying member of the NRA. I knew what to do with a weapon.

I dragged his body into the room, closed the door, and threw up everywhere. This was not what I expected on a Thursday morning.

After I had collected myself I went back to the safe. I leafed through the documents. The only one that had any meaning to me at the time was the first page.

Matthew,

If you are reading this I have most likely been killed. I know that you are a strong man but I hope that you did not have to make use of the item I provided for you. However, now is not the time for such wishes. Please take the documents provided with you and flee to Mexico. I have provided passports for you and your family. I urge you to take them and run as fast as you can.

And please forgive me.

Sincerely,

COL Jericho Olsen

Remembering the other instructions I had been given, I opened up the laptop computer, booted up what was clearly not a standard operating system and slipped in the flash drive. The screen went black immediately and I feared I had done somthing wrong. However, white text soon showed up saying things I didn't understand. I didn't take the time to figure things out.

I stood up, took a deep breath, slipped the gun into the back of my pants and walked quickly but calmly back to my desk. Fortunately I met no one along the way. I put on my coat and left a note on my desk stating that it was 9:30 and I felt ill and would be back the next day, please forward all calls etc. I don't know why I did it. It's not like I could return after leaving two bodies in my boss's office.

The rest of the news until Mexico is unimportant. I withdrew all my money from savings. I told my friends to leave the country if they had the opportunity, something big was about to go down. Most importnatly though, I managed to convince my dad and my sisters to come with me. When we arrived at the border the guards took a quick look at our passports and ushered us through welcoming us to the great country of Mexico.

We continued to drive as far South as Mexico City. All along our trip we heard of stories of strange happenings in the States. The most upsetting thing to hear was that there was no communication from North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, or parts of northern Iowa. I had been working in the city of Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

When we reached Mexico City we finally stopped. I paid for a couple hotel rooms in a nice part of the city and bought the laptop I'm writing this story on. The connection in the hotel wasn't good, but the news was worse. Most of the midwest was gone. Not as in there was no communication. As in when the planes flew over it, they couldn't see anything but fire. Ash was falling like snow in Chicago and Canada had closed its borders.

I kept this news from my family. There was no point in scaring them. I just kept the tv on Spanish soaps and told them to try to think of happy things.

It was at this time that I decided to take a closer look at the documents the colonel had left for me. It was ugly stuff. My friend the Colonel had been doing some dirty things. Apparently the facility I worked in was experimenting on criminals with radiation and other things I don't even know how to explain. There were reports of things like a lady looking like she had turned inside out and constantly gushing blood until the supplemental bags ran dry. I will include these documents with my story when I have calmed down.

The scariest page was a write up about one patient who had spontaneously combusted and couldn't be put out. He was in constant agony and begged to be killed. It reminded me of the Human Torch. The Colonel had denied this request but told the convict that he would do his best to end the pain. The man was kept sedated in isolation until a General could be brought to observe him.

When the General arrived he was disgusted but intrigued. He demanded a field test of Subject Q1100317. The Colonel protested saying that this man had suffered enough and that they should end his pain. The General apparently was not pleased with this and told the Colonel that this job was not for a soft man. The Colonel continued to protest and the General forced him into to the cell with Q1100317. The doctor on hand stopped the sedative feed and the Human Torch woke up.

The details are grisly and I will post them later, but the Colonel did not survive this encounter. Unfortunately, this pleased the General. He ordered a full field test be prepared for the next week.

"This man could change the way wars are fought."

I've just heard that the United States has been quarantined. No one is allowed in or out. My country is burning to the ground. And I can't escape the smell of smoke.

In the last decade and a half it's become infinitely easier to obtain exactly what you're looking for, by way of a couple of keystrokes. The Internet has made it all too simple to use a computer to change reality. An abundance of information is merely a search engine away, to the point where it's hard to imagine life as any different.

Yet, a generation ago, when the words 'streaming' and 'torrent' were meaningless save for conversations about water, people met face-to-face to conduct software swap parties, trading games and applications on Sharpie-labeled five-and-a-quarter inch floppies.

Of course, most of the time the meets were a way for frugal, community-minded individuals to trade popular games like King's Quest and Maniac Mansion amongst themselves. However, a few early programming talents designed their own computer games to share amongst their circle of acquaintances, who in turn would pass it on, until, if fun and well-designed enough, an independently-developed game had its place in the collection of aficionados across the country. Think of it as the 80's equivalent of a viral video.

Pale Luna, on the other hand, was never circulated outside of the San Fransisco Bay Area. All known copies have been long disposed of, all computers that have ever run the game now detritus buried under layers of filth and polystyrene. This fact is attributed to a number of rather abstruse design choices made by its programmer.

Pale Luna was a text adventure in the vein of Zork and The Lurking Horror, at a time when said genre was swiftly going out of fashion. Upon booting the program, the player was presented with a screen almost completely blank, except for the text:

-You are in a dark room. Moonlight shines through the window.

-There is GOLD in the corner, along with a SHOVEL and a ROPE.

-There is a DOOR to the EAST.

-Command?

So began the game that one writer for a long-out-of-print fanzine decried as "enigmatic, nonsensical, and completely unplayable". As the only commands that the game would accept were PICK UP GOLD, PICK UP SHOVEL, PICK UP ROPE, OPEN DOOR, and GO EAST, the player was soon presented with the following:

-Reap your reward.

-PALE LUNA SMILES AT YOU.

-You are in a forest.There are paths to the NORTH, WEST, and EAST.

-Command?

What quickly infuriated the few who've played the game was the confusing and buggy nature of the second screen onward — only one of the directional decisions would be the correct one. For example, on this occasion, a command to go in a direction other than NORTH would lead to the system freezing, requiring the operator to hard reboot the entire computer.

Further, any subsequent screens seemed to merely repeat the above text, with the difference being only the directions available. Worse still, the standard text adventure commands appeared to be useless: The only accepted non-movement-related prompts were USE GOLD, which caused the game to display the message:

-Not here.

USE SHOVEL, which brought up:

-Not now.

And USE ROPE, which prompted the text:

-You've already used this.

Most who played the game progressed a couple of screens into it before becoming fed-up by having to constantly reboot and tossing the disk in disgust, writing off the experience as a shoddily programmed farce. However, there is one thing about the world of computers that remains true, no matter the era: some people who use them have way too much time on their hands.

A young man by the name of Michael Nevins decided to see if there was more to Pale Luna than what met the eye. Five hours and thirty-three screens worth of trial-and-error and unplugged computer cords later, he finally managed to make the game display different text. The text in this new area read:

-PALE LUNA SMILES WIDE

-There are no paths

-PALE LUNA SMILES WIDE

-The ground is soft

-PALE LUNA SMILES WIDE

-Here

-Command?

It was another hour still before Nevins stumbled upon the proper combination of phrases to make the game progress any further; DIG HOLE, DROP GOLD, then FILL HOLE. This caused the screen to display:

-congratulations

—— 40.24248 ——

—— -121.4434 ——

upon which the game ceased to accept commands, requiring the user to reboot one last time.

After some deliberation, Nevins came to the conclusion that the numbers referred to lines of latitude and longitude — the coordinates lead to a point in the sprawling forest that dominated the nearby Lassen Volcanic Park. As he possessed much more free time than sense, Nevins vowed to see Pale Luna through to its ending.

The next day, armed with a map, a compass, and a shovel, he navigated the park's trails, noting with amusement how each turn he made corresponded roughly to those that he took in-game. Though he initially regretted bringing the cumbersome digging tool on a mere hunch, the path's similarity all but confirmed his suspicions that the journey would end with him face-to-face with an eccentric's buried treasure.

Out of breath after a tricky struggle to the coordinates, he was pleasantly surprised by a literal stumble upon a patch of uneven dirt. Shoveling as excitedly as he was, it would be an understatement to say that he was taken aback when his heavy strokes unearthed the badly-decomposing head of a blonde-haired little girl.

Nevins promptly reported the situation to the authorities. The girl was identified as Karen Paulsen, 11, reported as missing to the San Diego Police Department a year and a half prior.

Efforts were made to track down the programmer of Pale Luna, but the nearly-anonymous legal gray area in which the software swapping community operated inescapably led to many dead ends.

Collectors have been known to offer upwards of six figures for an authentic copy of the game.